Tics

[Donzo]

Occasionally I get a tic in my right eyelid. It can last for 30 minutes and sometimes more than a day.
End of quote :

Sometimes when I was traveling/working long weeks I would get a twitch in my left eyelid. I think it was due to lack of sleep and stress - it always went away after a weekend at home. I have not had one since jumping.

It was like a small muscle in the eyelid started contracting for a few second from time to time- very irritating - at its worst it would slightly blur my left eye during twitches....imagine if that were permanent?

 

[Khan]

Sometimes when I was traveling/working long weeks I would get a twitch in my left eyelid. I think it was due to lack of sleep and stress - it always went away after a weekend at home. I have not had one since jumping.

It was like a small muscle in the eyelid started contracting for a few second from time to time- very irritating

I had that also; it tapered off after retirement.

 

[Linney]

Interesting. VERY interesting. I will be seeing my parents this weekend and I'll ask them about the timeline of the appearance of the tics and of my tonsillectomy, both of which happened around age 7. My tonsils were removed due to repeated, unrelenting throat infections . . . .

So we had the family gathering today and I asked my mom about all this. She can't remember the specific timelines either (we're talking about 40-some years ago here) but she confirms that the tics appeared when I was in the 3rd grade -- the same school year that I had the tonsillectomy for unrelenting throat infections.

So maybe that's it. Maybe not. My mom also commented that my 3rd grade teacher and I didn't get along with each other so it was a very stressful year for me. She thought the tics were due to this stress (not that off target, really).

Wab -- w.r.t. the frequency versus age curve, it is hard to say. I had a severe spike at age 8 (the year the tics started) due to my parents' strong focus on trying to get rid of them. The frequency went down from there. The tics were substantially reduced by the time I started college, and get more infrequent with each passing year.

It is interesting that my responding on this topic has coincided with a reappearance of a tic this weekend. As I said, it is best to ignore them and they go away. So this will be my last post on this topic

 

[wabmester]

Linney, from my reading it looks like the strep connection (called PANDAS) is pretty controversial. A lot of kids get strep. A lot of kids get tics. But one doesn't necessarily follow from the other.

I've also tossed out my tuna sandwich theory. More kids would be ticcing if tuna had enough mercury to trigger tics.

And, for those of you with twitching eyelids -- not a tic. Tics are larger muscle (or multi-muscle) movements, not small muscle fiber twitches. Docs also distinguish tics from habits and mannerisms, which can be changed with training.

Our kid's tics are getting less frequent. I'm almost ready to write them off as an interesting developmental milestone, but we'll continue to watch (and obsessively read, of course).

 

[wabmester]

Just an update in case anybody is interested.

Our kid has been tic-free for about a week now. Our latest theory is that is was stress-induced. So, what was the stressor?

You may recall that our almost-4-year-old was struggling to come to terms with her own mortality:

link

I think she was pretty obsessed by this for about two weeks. I tried to resist giving her a sugar-coated death myth. I didn't want her to think people just "go to sleep," because that could make her afraid of sleeping. I didn't want to give her a story with clouds and wings and 72 smurfs, because that could screw her up for life.

I wanted to tell her to embrace life and impermanence, and that sometimes things are sad. Eventually, I gave up on the cold-hard reality bit. She obviously needed some sugar coating (which is one of the reasons religions were invented, I guess). So, I gave her a life cycle spiel with a quasi-reincarnation spin.

Now she's excited about coming back as a flower. She wants us all to be flowers. And the tics are gone.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Her wish is already coming true.

You're a daffydil...